Gary Coleman: For Safety's Sake [1986], An Idea Whose Time Has Come [1990], Hot Talk Starters: Episode 1 [1995], & Hotel Torgo [2004]

We decided to spend the evening with a bunch of short videos that we found online; the final three coming from our favorite Occult Demon Cassette.

The first one was from the genre of 80s videos you'd watch in health class. The premise of "Gary Coleman: For Safety's Sake" is that Gary Coleman is a god who sits in a control center as he tortures a young boy calling himself Jack Example with all kinds of nightmare scenarios in order to teach basic safety and first aid for children. At one point he even causes him to choke so they can demonstrate the Heimlich maneuver. We definitely got a few laughs from Jack's pain.

Spoon Rating: 5

The next thing we watched was an utterly baffling twenty minute video called "An Idea Whose Time Has Come". The whole video explained in detail a discovery made by an Austrian scientist that supposedly revolutionized the world. They then show people in the modern era drinking this darkly colored substance called KM and talking about how amazing it is and how you want to get it and be a part of it. At no point do they actually explain what the product does or why you should get it. It's pretty obviously a pyramid scheme but when we looked it up, we could barely find anything about it except that it's some kind of potassium based mineral supplement.

Spoon Rating: 7

The last comedic thing was episode one of something called "Hot Talk Starters". The show was divided into segments that were apparently meant to provoke a conversation. The first was about suicide (that called suicide the selfish choice), then questioning the existence of god, then dating with a touch of discussion about interfaith dating (we all took bets and Sarah won but Kay and Erik both knew sex would be coming next), and finally a bunch of interviews with teens in the KKK. It was interesting but not really funny. We probably won't watch more.

Spoon Rating: 3

The last thing we watched was a short documentary about "Manos: Hands of Fate"  called "Hotel Torgo." There wasn't much of note in it and we obviously didn't rate it because it wasn't mean to be bad. Either way though, we didn't learn much more about the film.

The She-Creature [1956]

It's been a while since we watched a film this old but the title was pretty hard to resist. The film is about a hypnotist who controls a woman who hates him. He makes the woman enter into the lives of people in the past in the least impression parlor trick ever (she lies down and talks about who she is now; often with a very fake British accent). There are also a bunch of murders going on and people suspect that the hypnotist has something to do with it, but can't prove it. We have a whole side cast of characters including a scientist who's bad at sciencing, a detective, and a rich guy who lets the hypnotist live in his house because his wife is really into his show. The hypnotist makes a ton of money on the story but still refuses to leave the rich guy's house. It turns out that the hypnotist is using the woman to summon a primitive sea creature to carry out murders. The scientist falls for the woman and hypnotist tries to sick the creature on him but she manages to get control of the creature and kill the hypnotist with it.

Overall, there were a few funny moments with the unimpressive hypnotism shows, bad science, and the creature's costume but it wasn't really funny enough to recommend.

Spoon Rating: 3

DOUBLE FEATURE: The Human Tornado [1976] & Dolemite Is My Name [2019]

A few weeks back we enjoyed Rudy Ray Moore's first film, "Dolemite", and here we are at the sequel, "The Human Tornado." The title makes him sound like a superhero but unfortunately this isn't a superhero movie. Moore plays Dolemite again and the title seems to just be a reference to his sexual prowess rather than a new title or anything (but the movie does come with a sweet new theme song, of course). 

We open on some Dolemite standup intercut with a woman dancing and then we are at a house party at Dolemite's mansion where a party is going on to raise money for children (this plot point is never explained and doesn't appear again). In spite of the party, he's busy because he's apparently so great at sex than one of the police officier's wives offers him money for it. The party is broken up when some very racist police break in and shoot the wife, pinning the blame on him. Dolemite and some friends escape the party and hijack a car to get to Los Angeles and the flamboyantly gay owner of the car is happy to go along for the ride. Once in LA, they go to visit Queen Bee (she was a figure in the first film too as a brothel owner I believe) and find that her club and her girls are under the control of a local mob boss. Two girls in particular were kidnapped and brought to the torture chamber basement of some witchy old woman's house. Dolemite makes it his mission to find the girls, get the mob boss to give up his control over Queen Bee and her workers, and also to evade the racist cops who have come all the way from Alabama to find him. This involves, as expected, a lot of weirdness but it is overall more coherent than "Dolemite." There's an absolutely Lynchian sequence where Dolemite seduces the mod boss's nymphomanic mistress and, of course, the girls all get trained in martial arts to fight the mafia guys during an all out brawl at the end.

Overall, "The Human Tornado" is neck and neck with "Petey Wheatstraw" for best Rudy Ray Moore film that we've seen (although "Petey" still has the best theme song). There is never a dull moment in the film and we got a ton of laughs throughout. At some point we will have to watch them closer together to decide which one is actually superior, but we can guarantee that they are both wonderful so if you want to explore all of Moore's films, save them for last.

Spoon Rating: 9

Afterwards we decided to watch the latest addition to the world of good movies about bad films, "Dolemite Is My Name" (in keeping with the fact that we also did double features of "Plan 9"/"Ed Wood" and "The Room"/"The Disaster Artist"). As we were hoping, it was a great watch. Eddie Murphy plays Rudy so well and it was fascinating to see how they chose to portray Rudy's emergence in standup, his friendship with Lady Reed (who plays Queen Bee), and the process of actually making "Dolemite." Amusingly, because this was so fresh on our mind, we all observed immediately that they used footage from "Human Tornado" in their clips of "Dolemite" but we can forgive the transgression in the name of art.

We recommend the film for sure, but you should at least see "Dolemite" before you do if not a few of Rudy Ray's films.

REWATCH: Manos: The Hands Of Fate [1966]

The first and only time we've watched "Manos: Hands of Fate" was in 2013, fairly early in the nearly eight year life of Bad Movie Night. Because it was so long ago, we never gave it a proper spoon rating so we decided to give it a rewatch.

The plot is basic for horror. A family gets lost on a desert vacation and ends up staying at an inn with a fawn-like porter named Torgo who keeps talking about "the master." The mother and father of the family spend a lot time staring at an ominous painting of the master and his dog who Torgo seems to imply is both dead and alive. Turns out there's a secret closet-cave-thing for a cult consisting of The Master and his many brides who mostly just stay in some kind of catatonic state but arise to worship their god, Manos. The family's dog dies, possibly by the Master's dog. Torgo ties up the father outside seemingly in part because he wants the mother to be his. The wives wake up and debate whether to kill the daughter or perserve her because she's female and have a brawl over it. Torgo gets punished by the Master by being massaged to death by the wives, but then he arises and the Master lights his hand on fire. The father escapes after one of the brides untied him and pulls a gun on the Master, but it seemed to be for nothing. We get a hard cut to a couple arriving at the inn with the father replacing Torgo and the mother and daughter in the garb of the wives, now under the Master's control.

This movie is bad but what makes it notorious is really how strange the aura of this movie is. None of us could quite put our finger on it. Erik mentioned that it feels kind of like a hazy dream. Adam said that it feels something like a silent movie that happens to have dialogue. This aura is created through really long sequences that move very slowly, repetitive and simplistic dialogue, background music that resembles improvisational jazz (with the exception of Torgo's theme), and a lot of moments that contribute to a sort of unreality: the fact that the daughter's few lines of dialogue are barely audible when everyone else is, the occasional cuts to this couple making out in a car who literally never move over what is at least 24 hours, the Master's lair being a room in the inn that seems to not exist all the time, the reoccuring hand motifs, and even the lack of a real climax as if that moment was cut from the film. It's fascinating enough to watch once, but maybe not engaging enough for a second time, I mean, unless maybe you wait seven years like we did.

Spoon Rating: 6

Lady Terminator [1988]

After watching and being very disappointed by "Lady Exterminator," we had to seek out the actual genderbent namesake of the classic science fiction movie and see for ourselves what kind of a narrative would be constructed. And, unlike with "Lady Exterminator" we were not disappointed with what we found. "Lady Terminator" is part explotation-y remake and part shot-for-shot ripoff (so basically the lady plus the terminator) with a delightful overlay of Indonisian folklore as a contrast to the cyberpunk aspects of the original. Apparently there's a whole rich history of Indonisian horror and exploitation films that a bunch of the DVD extras wanted to tell us about so this seems like another bad movie subgenre we will be looking further into on future Mondays.

We start with a goddess-like queen in some past time screwing men to death. She meets her match in a man who extracts an eel from between her legs and turns it into a dagger, an act which pisses her off enough to say that she will get revenge on his great granddaughter. Highly specific threat but okay. We fast forward to modern times where a lady, who fiercely corrects anyone who calls her a lady with "I'm an anthropologist", goes to research the Queen of the South Seas in Indonisia after an old man in a library tells her not to. After her diving adventure goes array with some light S&M and an eel getting all up in her, she is possessed by the Queen and ready for murder. She uses the same technique of death sex at first with some drunk by the shore, but her real goal is to get that granddaughter, identifiable because of her necklace (so her great granddad gave her an ID for the Queen to get her eventually). She ends up offing some girls wearing immitations of the necklace or just being witnesses and then suddenly the movie just becomes "The Terminator." We have a club (not called Tech Noir), we have a chase, we have an eye gouging scene, and we have the granddaughter taking refuge under a bridge with some rando cop because the time travel element isn't in this movie. It all ends how you would expect, and then we went off to do more research on the Queen of the South Seas, an important figure in Indonisian myth.

This movie was pretty solid. There were a lot of super strange reads and the whole premise itself is ripe for riticule. Add it to your list!

Spoon Rating: 7